Virtual Console pricing - has the community given in?
Sunday, July 15th, 2007 at 10:00am by Jake
Virtual Console games: you love’em; you hate’em; you sometimes grow tired of them, but it’s always fun to revisit the old school titles that forever changed gaming. Many of us that work and aren’t rolling around in cash often argue that the cost of the current VC titles is too high. Even now, seven and a half months after launch, there is still whining coming from the heart of the fan base itself. Some titles are worth every Wii Point and more, while some should have just faded away with the 80’s. If you’re a Nintendo fan or not, most of us still have the original consoles and favorite cartridges that are still cooling off from the 8-bit glory days.
Joystiq’s comments concerning the decline of VC titles sales during April:
Given initial sales of the titles, the cost of development for the VC’s infrastructure in all probability is already paid off. There’s hardly any conversion or work that goes into making these titles for the VC. It’s ancient code being sold for $5 to $10 and it all goes straight into Nintendo’s rainy day fund.
What’s wrong with our cartridges? Almost all NES, SNES, and N64 cartridges use a small battery to power internal memory which holds your scores and saves. This means that your favorite original cartridges will eventually lose the ability to save games. So unless you love speed runs or enjoying soldering new batteries into your old cartridges, I’d suggest buying a Wii Point card.
It all comes down to this. Are you willing to repurchase titles, and restore your gaming library, or continue using slowly fading cartridges? Yes, it would be nice to see a drop in price or even get some extra content like original strategy guides or retro Nintendo Power scans just for kicks. Let’s just hope WiiWare will get the same attention as the current state of the VC.
In the end, Nintendo is just trying to give us something to play with. That’s a good thing.
What do think Infendo Nation? Does this issue still hold a strong debate or has the community given in?
July 15th, 2007 at 11:31 am
Well, I am a little disappointed in the price of the VC games. I mean i could run out to any old hobby shop, and find half of those NES game for at most a buck. 5 bucks for a game 20 years old, is kind of a lot, then again, star craft still sells for like 20 bucks and its nearly 10 years old. In addition, the price hasn’t stopped people from buying them, there has been i believe well over a million VC Dls already, and that number grows every day. I myself have bought a lot. Over all, would i be more inclined to buy a game on the VC if they where cheaper, hell yeah. Hopefully they will lower the prices a bit, but i doubt they will.
July 15th, 2007 at 12:07 pm
I actually like the fact that the price is as expensive as it is, not because I like spending more money, but because it makes it so you have to really think about what game you want to get next, and then getting it is all the more exciting. If every game was $1, every person would have all the same games, everyone would have every game just for the sake of having it and most of the games would never get played.
July 15th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
If you have an old console hooked up to your TV and all the original carts to the games you love, you are not the target for the virtual console. They are selling VC games to people that have no way to relive their childhood on a TV without hassle or legal ambiguities.
Also, I have spoken with people that go through all the hassle of finding ROMs, getting emulators, etc. By the time they get their game working, they would have gladly paid $5 for instant gratification without having to use a keyboard instead of a real gamepad.
Personally, I never owned or played the SNES, N64, TurboGrafx (never even seen one in real life), or SEGA systems. For games that are universally guaranteed hits (Ocarina of Time, etc), it is completely worth $5-10 for a beautiful experience that “just works” on my TV.
I’m still amazed at SEGA though. They’ve put out so many compilation sets, that I bought for $15 one PS2 compilation that included every game I’ve found on SEGA’s VC page…that has to be making their sales markedly lower than the rest. It seems Nintendo’s reluctance to re-release old games early on has paid off with the much more profitable VC sales…
July 15th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
I kinda have to agree with this. I bought my first wii points card, went home and bought a couple of games and was like “wow..there went 20 bucks in like 10 minutes…”
July 15th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
I really wish they were cheaper, but still better than having 6 consoles connected to your TV…
A really weird thing,though: I was over at a friend’s house last night and he was stocking up on some Wii points. During checkout it asked him for where he lived and then proceeded to add sales tax to the purchase. I’ve bought Wii Points twice and never paid taxes, when did this start happening?
July 15th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
NES games should be a buck or two, even Zelda. It should be an iTunes-like experience shopping for old NES games. If I have a 20 dollar card, 5 bucks is not an impulse buy.
On the other hand, I think N64 games are priced perfectly. Most of the N64 games on the VC will cost me 10 bucks or more if I run over to Gamestop to buy them.
Everything else is in sort of a grey area.
July 15th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
The only thing I agree is that 5.00 for a NES game is too much, maybe not so with the Genesis and SNES games; most of the ones I bought were way worth it. I wouldn’t even mind paying 10.00 for Streets of Rage 2, it is just so much fun.
Too bad I ended up buying games I rarely touch like Ninja Gaiden (I come back to it once in a while, but I haven’t played it from the beginning; just been saving it at one point.) and The Legend of the Mystical Ninja (Just can’t seem to get hooked to this game).
July 15th, 2007 at 3:25 pm
There is nothing wrong with your old cartridges. I just really wanted to point out the fact that the memory is going to be lost within the next 5-ish years. Plus it’s an improved quality in resolution.
July 15th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
I think the pricing is fine. If it isn’t worth the money to you, then don’t buy them. Every game I have on the VC I don’t currently own on any other platform and to be able to play it on my Wii with a flexible choice of controllers is worth it. Also, if you really care about how precise the control is in your classic games, you can’t beat VC. I’ve played many emulated games on my computer and there’s always a slight delay using a pc gamepad. My personal favorite is using the Wii remote for NES games. It’s such a good controller! So yeah, just ask yourself if it’s worth it and if not, don’t buy ‘em.
July 15th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
They charge you 5 dollars because they can. Prices will go down, but why start off with a low price that can’t or hardly can’t drop?
12 Euro for Sonic 1 & 2? Totally worth it.
July 15th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
I will say the prices are ok , but please Nintendo include a VC demo channel , I know they are websites that have VC reviews but is not the same , it will be much nicer to have a playable VC demo channel, if your curious about a game that you havent played before it will prevent people from making a bad purchase , or it will make your purchase worth it..
Little things like that makes a lot of difference, how much will it cost Nintendo to add such feature (playable, VC demo channel) ppl like to try stuff before they buy them, adding a feature like the VC demo channel will give ppl more option making every game worth the purchase…
July 15th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
I have no problem with the cost of the VC games. They’re reasonable and worth every penny. I would love to see some occasional sales or specials though. It would make the shop channel more exciting. I just want more titles. That’s where I’m very disappointed. Where are Castlevania II, Goonies II, 3-D Worldrunner, and Metal Gear?
July 15th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
And I have to add that it’s completely worth the money to not have to deal with my old cartridges, and all the wires and hardware that is required to play them. I’d easily pay $25 to play Castlevania II again without having to blow into my NES for a half hour first. I still have all those old games, but they’re not worth the hassle of making a total mess out of my living room and the frustration of fighting the system just to get it to work. VC makes things convenient and simple.
July 15th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
Couple things. First I want to respond to one commenter, “They are selling VC games to people that have no way to relive their childhood on a TV without hassle or legal ambiguities.” - There’s another legal way to avoid legal hassle, it’s a wonderful thing called eBay. You could buy an old NES or Genesis with games for less. The VC may be a little less problematic, but there are certainly other legal solutions as well.
Further, the big issue I have with the VC isn’t just the pricing, it’s the way Nintendo justifies it. I have complained to Nintendo several times (and I encourage everyone else to do so as well), and these are direct quotes from various reps explaining the price:
“keep in mind that most of the games available on the Virtual Console originally sold for $50 or more dollars, and they are already greatly reduced in price”
Here it sounds like I should applaud someone who wants to sell me a 1985 stationwagon for “only” $10,000 because he paid well over $20,000 when he bought it. Yeah it was $50, when it came out, but it was state-of-the-art back then, not any more.
“let’s say that years ago I bought an album on 8-track tape. Later on, I bought a car with AM/FM and Cassette, so I bought it again on cassette. Today, however, I listen to everything on my mp3 player, so I decided to pay to download it directly to my PC. In each case, I didn’t get any discount on the purchase because I had previously purchased the album in another format”
In this case, they imply that VC games are *better* than the originals. In this analogy, the quality of an mp3 is hundreds of times worse than an mp3. They see the VC as an improvement over the original. An improvement with reduced features (e.g., no rumble support for N64 games, no saving ability for some N64 games that required memory cards, no ability to use “special” controllers - power gloves, guns, etc.)
Additionally, I complain about the pricing because of Sony (yes this is something I actually think Sony got right!) Look at the Playstation Network. PSOne titles go for $5.99, that’s just 99 cents more than an NES game, and 1 cent less than a Turbografx game on the VC. Are you going to tell me that an NES game (regardless of how fun they were) should cost almost the same as a PSOne game? The PSOne would be the equivilent of the N64, yet Nintendo charges $10 for N64. In that comparison, it is ridiculous in my mind.
Also, I take issue with the whole Wii Points. Why can’t I just use good old dollars? When I went to Wal-Mart to get my Wii, they wouldn’t have accepted 250,000 Wii Points, they wanted 250 dollars. Why the need for the fake currency? I can tell you why. I wanted to buy a single Genesis game for 800 points. Yet, the smallest denomination card available? 1000. So now I have 200 points left over. I can’t do anything with them because the cheapest game is 500 points. Yet, Nintendo has my 200 points even though I cannot yet spend them. So essentially, they got $10 from me and I currently have $8 worth of service. To draw an analogy again. Say you go to your grocery store and buy $8 worth of food and pay with a $10 bill. The cashier says to you “I’ll just hold onto the $2 and you will have 200 worth of Food Points for the next time you shop.” You’d probably get mad and demand your $2 change. Yet, for the VC, we accept Nintendo taking more money than we wanted to spend. Obviously they hope this now means you’ll go out and buy more points and spend more money in an effort to not “waste” your 200 points.
Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the Wii. I have probably spent close to $1,000 between the system, games, and controllers. Nintendo is making more money off the Wii than they know what to do with. Why must they rip us off on the VC now? I think the VC is a great idea, but the pricing is just wrong. If you agree, tell Nintendo! Fill out the form on their site (yes people read it, I’ve gotten responses).
I don’t want to just complain so I’ll offer three solutions that would make me happy and I think, make the VC an even bigger success.
1.) Give back to loyal Nintendo-ers. Every Nintendo system, from the NES onward, has a unique serial number. Why can’t I register my NES serial number and get a discount? Maybe it’s 100 points off each game, maybe it’s just a 1-time discount. Either way, it says “thank you for sticking with us through the hard times.” Not every Nintendo system was a smashing success (e.g. Virtual Boy and GameCube). Give thanks to those who are loyal and not just the PS/XBox converts that are making the Wii a success.
2.) Classic discounts. When I buy Twilight Princess, why don’t you give me a 100 point discount on previous Zelda games? Same for Mario and other popular series. I’d be more inclined to buy the original 3 Mario games if they were cheaper (I still have the carts and they still work fine). Give me a discount for buying into the Wii games now and help me discover classics.
3.) Ditch the Wii Points
If Dollars are good enough to buy the system, buy the accessories, and buy the games, they should be good enough to also buy the VC games.
July 15th, 2007 at 9:34 pm
No, Jake. You’re wrong. Nintendo’s not trying to give us something to play with, they’re trying to give us something to PAY with. Nintendo is ripping off its core gamers at every turn whether you want to believe it or not. They are a profit-based organization. Selling games for 5-10 dollars is blasphemy. So is making points purchasable in only 10, 20 and 30 dollar amounts. We ARE being ripped off. Stick to the cartridges. They’ll last another good 5-10 years until Nintendo finally stops being asinine.
July 15th, 2007 at 11:38 pm
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – drop the prices on all VC games by $2 bucks a pop and it’s a great deal for what you get.
If Nintendo would give us simple things like online play and such in games, then I could see the current pricing justified.
But as it stands now, it’s just waaaay to expensive for what you get. Especially if Nintendo isn’t even going to go the extra…quarter of a mile and add in things like rumble compatibility or memory card data saves.
I can download an emulator off the web and get all these things…including online play, in some cases. Why exactly can’t we have that on the VC?
July 15th, 2007 at 11:49 pm
Wow, that was alot of boring reading - They cost too much, but we buy them anyway - Nintendo makes money - End of Story
Hope you read this first and saved your time for something meaningful.
July 16th, 2007 at 1:49 am
I downloaded Star Fox 64 the other night for sh!ts and giggles and the nostalgia was almost overwhelming (although I’d still love to have the original on VC). I still own around 200 cartridge games from the NES, SNES, N64, and Genesis, and I’m not really enticed to download a lot of the games I already own a working copy of. Speaking of where the money is going, though, I really think that VC sales are going to help foot the bill for a lot of support for indy development once WiiWare takes off next year. I’m personally interested in developing for the Wii and I really want to know what kind of production freedom is going to be given to the indy titles. So I’m not necessarily complaining about the VC pricing (makes perfect sense to me and I’m sure it’s easy money for Nintendo), but I would like to perhaps see more depth to the VC. Old-school imports and rare-prints would be nice, and if someone could figure out how to rig online multiplayer gaming into the older games (some kind of cross-over networking utility or something….) I think things would definitely seem more worthwhile…
July 16th, 2007 at 11:04 am
Nintendo is not “trying to give us something to play with”, they’re trying to make money. I think $5 for a NES game is ridiculous. I don’t have as much of a problem with the other prices, but I do think the Wii Points system is crap because it forces you to buy more than you need. Also considering all you’re getting is basically a non-updated rom, although in some cases they’ve actually taken things out, which I think is even worse.
Look, I know this is a Nintendo fanboy site, but let’s remember Nintendo’s #1 goal is NOT the gamer, it’s the bottom line. So I think it’s time to drop this holier than thou attitude about how Nintendo “cares” about gamers more than Microsoft or Sony. If anything, the VC is proof of this.
July 16th, 2007 at 12:13 pm
@ boisv
wow what a long comment on such a pointless topic. if you don’t like the prices, don’t buy them and go out and buy your dirty, dusty, old pieces of crap. you start off trying to make a point about legal issues and say go to ebay, this then that and missed the first point of no hassle. duh…either way it’s a personal preference. one may argue nothing will give the experience of the original system except the original system itself, but then i fall into the trap of becoming like you long winded….
July 16th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
us nerds aren’t the consumers Nintendo aims for with Virtual Console, we may benefit with it, but mostly everyone already uses emulators on the pcs and even buys used games at flea markets, but most regular people will see this as an opportunity to play old games that they may have played when they were young, and that’s IF they can setup the WIFI to work… after that $10 for a classic game from the 90’s is cheap and $5 for Super Mario Bros. 3 is almost free.
July 16th, 2007 at 2:21 pm
I agree with BlockSS, the VC should definitely allow you to demo games before committing to such (arguably high) prices. There are a lot of old games, especially those for the TurboGrafx, that I have never touched before. I don’t want to just throw out $6-8 and hope I’ll like the games. Additionally, Xbox Live Arcade allows demos and I think Nintendo should do the same if they want to keep up with the vastly superior online service that is Xbox Live. Games on live DO have additional features such as online play and/or world high score boards. C’mon Nintendo, embrace what people want with your online service!
July 16th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
I don’t have much time to play the old classics anymore, so my selection of VC titles that I will actually purchase is very narrow. And the improvement in resolution when playing these old titles through Wii, especially the N64 games, is palpable. I just can’t go back and play Super Mario 64 on the original N64 after playing it on the VC through my HD TV!
July 17th, 2007 at 1:18 am
Johnnymilkshark, if you experience a control delay when playing an emulator with a gamepad, either you need a new PC or your emulator is configured wrong. Probably the latter. There would have to be a 33 millisecond delay for it to be even one frame off, 40 for PAL games, and USB doesn’t have that kind of latencies (unless Windows has gotten a lot worse since I used it last.)
July 17th, 2007 at 9:12 am
I would like to see their VC sales figures.
My guess is they sell a fair chunk of titles, but aren’t doing themselves any favours in the long term by pricing their titles so high.
Fanboys will purchase the most-per-person.
Casual gamers probably on average spend one points card and wont buy another. They’ll buy their card, go home, buy a couple of games off hand not realizing the true cost/points/value ratio and decide that the VC sucks.
Then people like me who will buy one or two games once in a blue moon knowing it’s a ripoff but nostalgia getting the better.
So they make money right now because of the number of units sold they can afford one time VC buyers. They can afford to rip off their customers because hype is on their side and they know it.
Unless significant development costs have gone into an old title (ie making Street Fighter 2 playable online like the 360 version) then the current prices aren’t value for money, theyre just what Nintendo can get away with.